This competitive renewal of our T35 program is targeted towards undergraduate, graduate, and medical students. Our purpose is to provide and environment that will stimulate these trainees to pursue careers in biomedical research in fields related to heart, lung, or hematologic diseases. The success of our program over the past 10 years has allowed us to expand our program to include clinical and basic science investigators who are highly interactive and studying areas that include lung infections, regulation of immune responses, vascular biology, gene regulation and gene therapy, epithelial and endothelial cell biology, exercise, and airway physiology. These investigators span numerous departments including Medicine, Pediatrics, Microbiology and Immunology, Cellular &Integrative Physiology, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Pharmacology and Toxicology, and Pathology. The wide range of laboratories and faculty in our program will provide trainees with outstanding exposure to fields related to heart, lung, or hematologic disease. Progress Central to our success has been that the T35 served as a "link" to combine training experiences for minority high school students up through postdoctoral fellows. Our "multi-tiered" training program has emphasized the importance of having trainees from several educational levels work with students who have exceeded at the next level. Seeing that the next level is attainable empowers the junior trainee and provides a higher level of confidence to pursue careers in science. Further, research methods are reinforced for the senior trainee who teaches a junior trainee. This approach facilitates the development of a student network that persists beyond the end of the training period. An outcome study clearly showed that the program serves as a "pipeline" for recruitment of minorities into biomedical sciences. To recruit and retain minorities in biomedical science we propose several specific aims: 1) The student will have a high quality scientific experience examining an area related to heart, lung, or hematologic pathophysiology. 2) The student will actively participate in the multi-tiered training program. 3) The student will become part of a "network" crossing multiple education levels. Our "multi-tiered" approach to training is novel and provides a model for successful training of minority students in biomedical research.